Crang Plays the Ace (28 page)

I stayed unmoving, and after half a minute I lifted my head again. Nicky was standing beside Grimaldi at the office building. Grimaldi was waving his arm, the one that wasn't holding the gun, apparently delivering fresh instructions to Nicky. Jerry wasn't to be seen, but reason told me that if Nicky had been searching my row of trucks, Jerry must be on another section of the grounds. Reason went on to advise me that this was probably a good time to make my switch to the garage.

I slid from the roof of the truck and trotted to the outside of the row of trucks, putting them in between me and the spot Grimaldi had staked out as his field headquarters. I ran down the row past seven trucks, watching in every direction for Jerry and not spotting him.

At the side of the garage, one truck stood separate from the rest. It wasn't in any of the tidy rows with its brother trucks. And there was something else different about it. Its windows were open. So was the driver's door. Only one answer. It must be the truck that Jerry and Nicky intended to employ in transporting my remains to the dump after Grimaldi finished with his execution job. Must be. If the windows and door were open, the keys might be in the ignition. I hoisted myself up the step into the truck's cab and looked across the dashboard. No keys.

Maybe in the garage. I dropped back to the ground and hustled around to the rear of the garage and through the open entrance into one of the bays. The bay door had been lifted high overhead. I looked around for a board where keys to the trucks might be kept. I didn't see a board or any keys.

All I saw was Jerry.

He had his back turned. He was in the garage and he was looking for me. He held a hammer in his hand. He was trying to be stealthy. Two could play at all of those games. Another hammer, many hammers in fact, lay on a workbench that was within reaching distance of my right hand. I picked one up, a ferocious-looking instrument, and tiptoed after Jerry. He was about six paces in front of me, back still turned, and I covered the space in four fast tiptoes. Jerry didn't hear me. There was something to be said for Rockports with cushiony soles. I hit Jerry in the centre of his head with the flat side of the hammer's business end. He fell forward on his beard. I waited, and Jerry didn't move. No blood appeared from the centre of his head. Clean knockout.

I leaned over Jerry and detached the ring of many keys from his belt. One of the keys had to start the truck beside the garage. But which? There were at least a dozen on the ring. The vision in my head, as soon as I located the right key, was of making the great escape. Start the truck, drive down the rows of trucks past Nicky and Grimaldi, crash through the gates, and soar to freedom. Well, rumble to freedom.

The only way to put my vision on the path to reality was to test the keys in the truck's ignition. I started back the way I'd come, through the open bay door and around the rear of the garage. Before I reached the truck, I stopped, returned to the garage, and picked up the hammer I'd used to deck Jerry. I hefted it in my hand. It made me feel semi-secure.

Back outside, I climbed into the cab of the truck and began testing the keys. It was aggravating work, slowed by the shakes in my hands and the necessity to keep a watch for Nicky and Grimaldi. I got through five keys without finding the one that fit the ignition when Nicky came into sight. He was about twenty yards away and walking down a row of trucks in the centre of the yard. As he walked, he was checking under each truck, no doubt on the lookout for my running legs. My legs weren't running. They were in the cab of the truck and they were beginning to tremble.

The eighth key slid into the ignition. Eureka. Soon be on my way. That was the upside of the situation. The downside was that as soon as I started the engine, I'd attract Nicky's notice. And Grimaldi's. No choice. I turned the key in the ignition. The truck's motor started on two sound levels. First it burped. Then it roared. At the burp, Nicky straightened up. At the roar, he came barrelling toward the truck.

“I found him,” he shouted as he ran. Liar. It was me who found me for him.

At Nicky's shout, Grimaldi steamed into view at the top of the row of trucks to my left. He had the gun at his side and he was running hard. But Grimaldi was still eighty or ninety yards away. Nicky was closer. Nicky was coming around the front of the truck to the driver's side.

Inside the cab, the space was a confusion of gears and levers and chains. The levers and chains worked the bin on the back of the truck. I wasn't concerned with them. It was the gears that were giving me trouble. I couldn't find a forward shift, something that would get the truck in motion. I was stuck in neutral. I pressed the clutch with my foot and pushed and pulled on the gearshift. The sound of grinding metal emitted from somewhere below me in the truck's bowels. Nothing moved forward.

Nicky's head popped up outside the open window on my side of the truck. He was on the step and he had one hand around the handle of the door. The other hand reached at my head. No chance to pull the old door trick, not as long as Nicky controlled the outside handle. My hammer routine was called for.

I abandoned the hopeless wrestle with the gears and picked the hammer off the seat with my right hand. Nicky had me by the neck and he was squeezing hard. That hampered the hammer-wielding and the cozy confines of the cab didn't leave much room for swinging it. I pushed it instead. Straight into Nicky's nose. A direct hit. His forehead was already bloody from the bang I'd delivered with the back door. The bleeding nose gave him a companion piece in crimson.

Nicky was tenacious. Through the blood and pain he held on to my neck. His hand was weakening, but he didn't need to maintain the hold for long. Help was now fifty yards away. Grimaldi and his gun were covering the ground at a rapid pace. I whapped at Nicky with the hammer. It caught him on the left cheek. He kept his grip. I felt a choke deep in my throat where Nicky's fingers pressed at me. I gave him another whap on his right cheek. He let out a scream. But he wouldn't quit. Another whap, smack on the bleeding nose. That got results. Nicky let go of my throat. His hand went limp and fell away. Nicky's eyes blinked, his head wobbled, but he didn't fall to the ground. I used the hammer to tap him once lightly in the chest. He dropped from sight. A real gamer, that Nicky.

Grimaldi's first shot zipped through the windshield a foot to the right of where I was sitting. He was thirty yards away, crouching and gripping the gun with both hands straight out in front of him. I ducked in my seat and went back to the clutch and gearshift. Another shot from Grimaldi produced another hole in the windshield. This one was two feet farther to the right. The crouch and all the
Hill Street
Blues
shooting style weren't doing much for Grimaldi's aim.

During the non-stop action, the tussle with Nicky and the shots from Grimaldi and the sprinkling of tiny pieces of windshield glass on the seat beside me, the truck's engine hadn't stalled. Small mercies. It kept on roaring. And when I heaved at the gearshift in ultimate desperation, I got something to work. The truck lurched ahead. I'd found a gear, not the right gear but something that put the truck in forward motion. It wasn't making for a smooth journey. The truck lurched. Then it leaped. It felt as if the damned thing were leaving the ground and taking miniature hops. I wouldn't be going anywhere fast.

Grimaldi was holding his fire, probably waiting for a clear shot. He might have to wait awhile. The truck's heaving and bucking made me a difficult target. Grimaldi was off to the right. I caught a glimpse of him, still crouched, still holding the gun at arm's length, backing away, looking for a shooting angle. The truck, carrying on like a kangaroo, cut down his chances.

My hippity-hoppity progress carried me down the row of trucks, past Grimaldi, and almost to the office building. The gate was beginning to shape up as a realistic objective. I examined the rearview mirror for a sighting of Grimaldi. He was nowhere in range. While I was examining, the truck stopped hopping and skipping. It stopped altogether. The engine had stalled.

Without the roar of the motor, the yard was suddenly still. I could hear Grimaldi's footsteps on the pavement. He came into view in the rearview mirror. He was about fifty yards back of the truck and he was dashing toward it. He had his gun at the ready. His strategy seemed clear. He'd come up from the rear, directly behind the truck, under cover and out of sight, and circle around until he had an unimpeded pop at me with the gun.

I needed a strategy of my own. Never mind taking another crack at starting the truck. Too unreliable. I couldn't leave the cab and take off on foot. Grimaldi would pick me off. In the matter of weapons, my hammer didn't measure up to Grimaldi's pistol. The possibilities of escape had become less than infinite.

I looked around the interior of the cab. The lever that operated the bin on the back of the truck stuck out of the floor. It had three indicated positions: Release, Lock,and Hold. It was in Lock. The chains that held the bin in place were overhead and had two positions: Secure and Release. It was in Secure.

Back to the rearview mirror. Grimaldi had drawn to within twenty yards. He was holding on course toward the back of the truck. I put my right hand on the lever and my left hand on the chains. I waited and watched Grimaldi. Fifteen yards away. Ten yards. Then he disappeared. He was too close to the truck for the mirror to catch him. I counted one, two, and pulled simultaneously on the lever and the chains until both hit the same position.

Release.

The silence of the yard was broken. So, I gathered from the tumult at the rear, were many other things. The noises came swiftly on one another. The sound of chains unravelling was first followed instantly by a thick scrape of metal, then a whoosh of air and the crash of a very heavy object thudding into the pavement. The heavy object had to be the truck's empty bin. No other heavy object back there.

I gave myself sixty seconds of careful listening before I dared to sneak a peak from my perch in the cab. The sixty seconds brought quiet back to the yard. It brought no sound of activity from Grimaldi. I stuck my head a few inches out the window. The bin was gone from the back of the truck. Without it, the truck looked naked. I climbed down from the cab and walked slowly toward the truck's rear. I had two reasons for taking it slow. One was wariness of Grimaldi, the other was the ongoing case of shakes in my legs.

The bin had flipped over. It rested upside down on the pavement. The sudden release of both lever and chain, not the usual way those controls were operated, had sent the bin into a 180-degree mid-air turn. It went up, flopped over, and smacked to earth.

Grimaldi and his gun were not to be seen.

I banged my fist on the side of the bin.

“Hey, Charlie,” I shouted, “you in there?”

I didn't think Grimaldi heard my voice. The walls of the bin were too thick. But he heard my pounding. He pounded back. His pounding had an angrier quality than mine.

Grimaldi wouldn't be keeping any appointments in the immediate future. Not even for the funeral of the woman he had killed. Charles was immobilized. I'd caught him. Like a rabbit in a snare. A Grimaldi in a bin.

I walked across the yard and into the Ace office building. My legs had a new steadiness. The envelope from the bank was on Grimaldi's desk and the cheque was inside. I carried it across the street to the Volks in the Majestic's parking lot. Noon-hour customers were arriving. Couple of beers, a hamburger, and the nurse in the shower. Zowie. I unlocked the trunk on the Volks, tucked the cheque behind the spare tire, and went back to the Ace office.

I made my phone calls from a secretary's desk on the street side of the corridor. The first and briefest call was to the cops. The dispatcher said it might take an hour to get a cruiser to the Ace property if I couldn't be more specific about the crimes I was reporting. I told him murder, fraud, burglary, and a nasty attitude. The dispatcher said he'd put in a rush call for all cruisers in the area.

When I got Ray Griffin, he wanted to quiz me on the phone. I told him to come on out to Ace and he'd earn himself a banner headline. Ray didn't bother telling me they'd done away with banner headlines. He said he was on his way. Tom Catalano said nothing about being on his way. He asked on the phone if the cheque was valid. Yes, I said, and he asked if it was in a safe place. Another yes. He said he'd let Wansborough know and, oh yes, he said to me, nice work.

The person who answered at the CBC radio arts program took two minutes to pull Annie out of the editing room.

“Here's the choice for this evening,” I said to Annie. “Sweat over your tapes or come with me and sip Dom Pérignon.”

“You forget,” Annie said. “I'm the girl who doesn't perspire.”

“How's eight o'clock at Scaramouche?”

“You're teasing.”

“When it comes to champagne and expensive restaurants,” I said, “I don't tinker with the truth.”

“You've closed the case or however lawyers phrase it.”

“I've got Alice's killer.”

“You're a darling.”

“Just for closing the case?”

“For that and other compelling reasons.”

“I'll need until eight,” I said. “I anticipate a few hours of explaining matters to the authorities.”

Outside the fence around the Ace property, the first police officers arrived. There were two of them, uniformed and in a yellow cruiser.

“You're all right?” Annie asked. “Nothing violent done to you?”

“Piece of cake.”

There was something familiar about the cops and the cruiser out front. The cruiser number was 3148. Oh-oh. The two cops were the smoker and the apple-eater from the encounter early Saturday morning. Annie was saying on the phone that she was ahead of schedule and she'd be done with editing the tapes by dinnertime. I interrupted her.

“Maybe nine o'clock for the champagne,” I said. “I see an extra hour of explaining coming my way. Can you wait?”